"Communication with Yuuzhan'tar has become garbled, Warmaster, but we have learned that Alliance warriors and several Jeedai have penetrated the Citadel."

Nas Choka folded his arms across his chest.

"Give no thought to Shimrra's capture or death. The G.o.ds would never permit it-especially on bearing witness to our victory at Zonama Sekot. Our mettle has been tested, and we have prevailed." He regarded the tactician for a long moment, then said, "My words provide so little consolation?"

The tactician frowned.

"Warmaster, Yuuzhan'tar has grown as serene as Zonama Sekot. Our weapons are silent, our beasts slumber, the fires are contained. Shamed Ones and renegade warriors hold sway over much of the sacred precinct.

Supreme Overlord Shimrra would not have permitted this. Our fear is that the World Brain has been killed."

"Then it will be the duty of the shapers to train a new dhuryam.

With the enemy defeated, we need be in no rush to give Yuuzhan'tar proper shape. "

Again, Nas Choka appraised his subordinate.

"The last of it, tactician."

"Ralroost and other warships speed for Yuuzhan'tar. I realize that you had hoped to witness the death of Zonama Sekot, but-"

Nas Choka waved him silent.

"Zonama Sekot's death does not depend on my presence."

"On Kre'fey's heels, then?"

The warmaster nodded.

"Place his vessel in our sights."

Buried under half a dozen blood-smeared bodies when the bunker had shifted, Jaina used what little maneuvering s.p.a.ce she had to avoid amphistaff fangs and venom, the serrated edges of coufees, and the sharpened teeth and hardened elbows and knees of warriors. Out of sheer desperation she tried to use the Force to throw everyone off her, and was bewildered when the crushing weight of the warriors abated-or at least until she realized that the sudden turnabout had nothing to do with the Force.

Shimrra's lair had simply tilted again, and now she and the same warriors were sent flying and tumbling toward the opposite wall. Hurled headfirst for the curved expanse of yorik coral, she just managed to get her free hand out in front of her and brace for impact. Loud grunts escaped the warriors as everyone hit the wall midway to the arched ceiling, then slid in a jumble to the floor as the bunker attempted to right itself.

Backward-somersaulting from the heap, Jaina shot to her feet and was preparing to Force-leap toward Shimrra when the chamber canted again.

This time she used the Force to hold herself to the floor as the half a dozen slayers went rushing past her out of control, some running faster than their legs could carry them, and others sliding on their bellies or backs. Loose amphistaffs tried to sidewind for the safety of the moat, but only a few made it, and the rest were flung hard into the wall.

Once more the lair leveled out before tilting a full thirty degrees, and those warriors still on their feet launched themselves at Jaina, only to slip on whatever it was that had sloshed from the moat and was fast slicking the entire floor. Close to the osmotic membrane, Luke and a st.u.r.dy warrior were in the midst of a fierce duel, their free hands clamped on the burned edges of the breach the lightsabers had opened.

Though Jaina couldn't see Jacen, she could perceive him behind her, and she could hear the burning hiss of his lightsaber as it connected with the slayers' weapons and armored flesh.

In the center of the bunker, giant Shimrra had left his throne and was tottering toward the moat, his powerful amphistaff unfurled and serving as a kind of walking stick. Also in motion was Shimrra's companion, who was making steady if tortuous progress toward the curving stairway that climbed into the summit. Jaina had first noticed him moments earlier when the bunker had shifted, somehow maintaining his balance despite his asymmetry.

Unarmed, he had seemed intent on hiding himself. But it occurred to her now that the Shamed One might be heading for the summit to carry out one of Shimrra's commands; so instead of reengaging any of the slayers, she set out after him, reaching the base of the stairway just as the Shamed One was disappearing around a curve above. Pressing her back to the wall, she began to ascend a step at a time, her lightsaber ready in her left hand.

She felt Luke and Jacen reaching out to her through the Force, somewhat baffled by her actions. But instinct compelled her to continue following Shimrra's furtive partner. Reaching the top stair, she saw that the next level was a vast ready room, similar to the organiform cabin s.p.a.ces of the Yuuzhan Vong ship she had pirated from Myrkr.

Half a dozen dilating hatches led to adjacent cabin s.p.a.ces, and yet another stairway-more a ladder-climbed into what could only be the vessel's c.o.c.kpit. Jaina rushed to grab hold of the ladder as the bunker tilted. From below came the sounds of bodies being hurled first one way, then the other. In the midst of the swaying she heard the thrum of Luke's and Jacen's lightsabers, and the agonized cries of at least two slayers.

There was no sign of Shimrra's companion in the ready room, and no dilating locks that might have been opened to access other areas of the sphere, so the misshapen figure had to have climbed into the c.o.c.kpit.

Her instincts came alive even before she glanced up into the ladder well. The Shamed One was already plummeting directly for her. She raised her lightsaber over her head, but the Yuuzhan Vong managed to evade the blade and land feetfirst on her shoulders, driving her to the deck.

Bent over her, he wrenched the lightsaber from her hands and tossed it aside. Then, grabbing her by the right ankle, he sent her sliding across the floor. She hit the wall solidly, but sprang to her feet.

Shimrra's companion was on her just as quickly, driving his fanglike tooth into her right arm as his powerful hands pressed her to the wall.

Even before he stepped back, she had lost feeling and movement in her arm, and now she could feel the numbness beginning to spread like a dark tide, coursing through her armpit into her upper chest, spreading across her chest and into her other arm, up into her neck and head, and down through her torso and legs. She became as pliant as soft leather.

She remained alert but her lips and tongue couldn't form words. Her eyelids fluttered, and sounds grew indistinct. One thought kept repeating itself in her mind as she slipped into the blackest of voids. Before he had dropped on her, she had sensed him through the Force!

Buffeted by updrafts warmed by fires raging in the canyon, the Sekotan airship swayed precariously as it descended toward the landing platform. In the gondola's cramped cabin, Magister Jabitha, Cilghal, Tekli, Danni, and two male Ferroan pilots kept their gloomy silence. With the cold sky raked by the fiery streaks of attacking coralskippers, the trip to the cave had been dangerous and, in the end, in vain. If in retreat there, Sekot had refused to speak with any of them. Danni sat closest to the cabin door, trying without success to warm her fingers with her breath.

The temperature was still a degree or two above freezing, but she felt colder than she had been at Helska 4, so many years earlier, trapped under kilometers of ice. Born of dread and sadness, the chill rose from inside her, and she was powerless against it. No matter what Luke or any of the others said, she was not a Jedi. She couldn't even wield a lightsaber properly, much less warm herself by drawing on the Force, as tall Cilghal and diminutive Tekli had obviously done.

Whatever skills she had demonstrated while serving as sensor officer aboard the Wild Knights' blastboat, or helping Cilghal fashion yammosk jammers, they did not owe to the Force, but to a talent for science she had inherited from her astrophysicist mother, and to twenty-four years of working closely with droids and cutting-edge technology.

Yes, like the Jedi she could sometimes intuit the Yuuzhan Vong as voids in the spectrum of life, but if she were truly as Force-sensitive as Luke, Jacen, and Cilghal claimed her to be, then how had she failed to recognize Yomin Carr as not only a threat to her ExGal-4 science team on Belkadan, but also a harbinger of a new evil about to be unleashed on the galaxy? She was not a Jedi. She thought of herself as a sky-watcher who had been in the right place at the wrong time.

First to be taken captive by the Yuuzhan Vong at the start of the invasion; first to have had an up-close look at their biotech; first to have witnessed the breaking of a Jedi Knight-and because of those events, catapulted to the center of a war from which she might otherwise have hidden. Had Jacen not heard her distress cry through the Force, had he not come to her rescue in his iceborer, she would have died at Helska 4, or perhaps been broken and remade into a Yuuzhan Vong, as had nearly happened to Tahiri.

She owed her life to Jacen, and at one point had come close to falling in love with him. But as indebted to him as she was-and to Luke and the others, for allowing her to see and do things she might never have-she sometimes felt as if she had been conscripted into the Jedi order. Much as Jaina had been named the Sword of the Jedi, and much as Jacen was seen as almost emblematic of a new awareness of the Force, Danni saw herself as the would-be Jedi-part technical officer, part familiar. Spokesperson at Agamar-how proud her bureaucratic dad must have been-member of the Eclipse base team, reconnaissance agent on occupied Coruscant, and, for the better part of the past year, visitor on the living world of Zonama Sekot.

On her arrival, the planetary consciousness had used her in a counterfeit kidnapping plot, and only weeks earlier had used her as a resource for information about yammosks and dovin basals. And yet even after all she had been through, Danni had no true understanding of what she was really doing on Zonama Sekot, or why Sekot had specifically asked that she remain onworld, rather than accompany the Skywalkers and Solos to Coruscant. Perhaps Sekot merely wanted a would-be Jedi to bear witness to the end of the world. For what with the Sekotan fighters spiraling back down to the canyon-rim landing platform from which they had launched, and Zonama about to be poisoned by a vessel infected with Alpha Red, no other course seemed possible.

It was while stationed at Mon Calamari that she had first heard rumors of the Yuuzhan Vong-specific bioweapon. She had mentioned the rumors to Jacen and, for months following Vergere's theft of the prototype batch, had held herself partly responsible for much of what had happened. Ultimately she had learned that Vergere had actually overheard Luke and Mara discussing Alpha Red in private, and had acted on the knowledge. And now, all these months later, the Chiss-manufactured poison had found her again-though the end-of-the-war scenario for which it had been created had taken an ironic and tragic shift...

With most of the Ferroans secluded in the shelters, an eerie silence prevailed. To Danni, Zonama felt more adrift than when it had been lost in the Unknown Regions, and an autumnal spell had fallen over the tampasi. A few Sekotan fighters were already grounded. Corran, Kyp, Alema, and Zekk were waiting on the canyon-rim landing platform when the airship finally touched down. Everyone retreated to the shelter of the giant boras as plasma fire and windborne cinders rained down.

"Were you able to locate Sekot?" Kyp was first to ask.

"Sekot is everywhere," Jabitha told him.

Her dismay was evident, but her tone was sincere.

"Sekot is merely silent."

"Silence is one thing," Corran said, "but ignoring a threat is another."

He gestured overhead.

"Somewhere out there is a vessel that could end up killing this planet. Maybe not as quickly as Ithor died, but just as thoroughly."

The Magister compressed her lips.

"I'm certain Sekot is aware of the threat."

Alema blew out her breath in exasperation.

"We could try to reach Jade Shadow," she said, mostly to Kyp. "It's better suited to preventing the Alpha Red craft from going to ground."

"We can't simply blow the vessel to pieces," Cilghal said. "Not without risking sowing the atmosphere with poison. We have to trust that Sekot has reasons for taking the actions it did."

Kyp glanced at everyone in puzzlement.

"Why go to the trouble of creating ships if the aim all along was to surrender?"

"That wasn't the aim," Danni said. "None of us knew about the poisoned ship, so how could Sekot have known? As for why Sekot brought your fighters down, I have an idea-even though I hope I'm wrong."

"Say it anyway," Kyp said.

Danni glanced around.

"I think Sekot's goal is to allow the poison to reach the surface so that Zonama can contain it-to keep Alpha Red from being spread to the rest of the galaxy."

Corran shook his head slowly.

"I can't see Sekot martyring itself. Besides, what's to prevent any of us from spreading the toxin offworld by accident? Unless Sekot plans to keep us grounded, permanently."

"It's highly improbable that Alpha Red can be spread by human contagion," Cilghal said. "Early tests of the bioweapon support that.

Kyp, Han, and Leia were already exposed at Caluula, and ruled out as potential carriers."

Corran's eyes darted about.

"What about Mon Calamarians, Cilghal? What about Chadra-Fans or Twi'leks-or Ferroans, for that matter?" He shook his head again. "I don't think Sekot would risk it."

"If Sekot had kept the fighters airborne, we could have at least held the Yuuzhan Vong back until everyone was evacuated," Zekk said.

"Is there any chance Sekot's planning to jump Zonama to hypers.p.a.ce?" Kyp asked.

"The hyperdrive cores are as silent as Sekot," Jabitha said.

"Errant Venture might be able to evacuate everyone in time," Danni said.

"Sure, if we could reach Booster," Kyp said.

"But we're getting nothing on the comlinks."

"Sekot could be blocking the signals deliberately," Zekk said.

Jabitha turned to him.

"You're a.s.signing dark designs to a consciousness that knows little or nothing of subversion. Next you'll be accusing Sekot of refusing to allow your warships to land on the surface, as a means of marooning you here."

"I'm only saying that Sekot strikes me as a quick learner," Zekk said.

"What makes you think that Sekot would wish to sabotage us?"

Cilghal said.

Zekk shrugged.

"Only what I've been hearing about Sekot's belief in the Potentium.

If there's no distinction between the light and dark sides, then it won't matter what happens here-or even at Coruscant."

"Sekot wouldn't have agreed to return from the Unknown Regions just to die here," Cilghal said firmly. "That would hardly be the action of a world that considers itself the caretaker of the Force."

"The self-appointed caretaker," Alema said.

Jabitha sucked in her breath in surprise, then looked at Danni.

"Danni Quee. Sekot wishes to speak with you."

Only the Force was keeping Jacen from succ.u.mbing to the pain-the Force and what he had learned from Vergere during the indeterminate amount of time she had kept him in the Embrace of Pain-breaking him.

While under his mentor's tutelage he had been able to go into himself to meet the pain on its own terms. Now he didn't have that curious luxury, because he was having to call on all his abilities to keep from being killed. If not for the swaying of the Citadel and the effects of its unpredictable oscillations of Shimrra's coffer-his escape vessel-Jacen figured he would already be dead.

That was the World Brain, having finally decided which side it was on. The trouble was, that decision mattered only to the reshaping of Coruscant and not to the Supreme Overlord, who was clearly able to control objects in his immediate environment without need of the dhuryam.

The slayers, for one thing.

Where initially they had been moving with individual vigilance and of their own accord, they were now moving as coralskippers did under the control of a battle coordinator. The change had come simultaneously with Shimrra's rising from the throne, and the escape of his Shamed One companion, whom Jaina had pursued into the summit of the Citadel.

Jacen knew that her exit had been prompted by something she had perceived through the Force, but he and Luke could have used her lightsaber now. Three slayers had Jacen backed to the bunker's outer wall. Even through his Vongsense he could not predict their actions, or where their thrashing and thrusting amphistaffs were going to strike next. He had managed to evade copious sprays of venom, but his torso had taken countless lashings; his limbs were bruised by the heads and coils of the serpentine weapons-though none had yet been successful in sinking fangs into him.

His lightsaber had returned as many blows, but the slayers seemed to be largely immune to pain, if not indestructible. A half dozen corpses were sprawled on the floor, sliding or rolling with each random cant of the Citadel. But more than the lightsaber, it was acrobatics that was keeping Jacen from being overwhelmed by the specially engineered warriors. Time and again last-moment leaps had carried him out of the range of their shapeshifting weapons, as the fight moved along the perimeter of the throne room.

The gravity-tweaking dovin basal set in the base of the throne made it impossible for Jacen or his opponents to venture closer to the throne than the shallow moat that encircled it without being tugged violently to the yorik coral floor. Jacen took advantage of the gravitic anomaly now, as one of the slayers lunged for him. He leapt high into the air, and the warrior flew under his feet, only to be pulled to the floor facefirst, so that by the time Jacen had twisted in the air and landed he was able to drive his blade into the small of the warrior's back, almost pinioning him to the floor.

The other two immediately rushed him from behind. Unleashing his amphistaff, one warrior managed to wind the weapon around Jacen's legs, while the other swung his amphistaff at Jacen's head. Ducking the swing, Jacen leapt again, taking the attenuated amphistaff with him. Yanked from the warrior's grasp, the weapon unwound and dropped before it could strike.

Across the room Shimrra was moving stiffly toward Luke, who was being set upon by four warriors. The enormous Vong overlord stepped across the moat as if crossing a final line. Seemingly entranced-in sway of the Yuuzhan Vong G.o.ds-he fixed his glowing eye implants on his prey.

He held the thick-bodied amphistaff diagonally in front of him, with his giant left hand closed around the middle of the weapon's three-meter-long body.

Jacen sent a warning to his uncle through the Force, which Luke acknowledged-not only through the Force but also by spinning away from the warriors to provide himself with enough fighting room to confront Shimrra. Whirling through a cartwheel, Luke caught one of the warriors on the chin with the heels of his boots, unbalancing him enough so that Luke could get inside the arm that held the amphistaff and drive his lightsaber through the warrior's neck. As he quickly withdrew the blade, a second warrior was ready to pounce; Luke stretched out his left hand and impaled the slayer through the right eye.

At once the other two converged on him, battering him with their amphistaffs and coufees, opening ragged wounds in his upper arms and chest. Abruptly, the Citadel rocked and the room tilted to the right.

Luke dropped to one knee, holding his lightsaber arm up to protect his head, then dived, somersaulting on landing and spinning to his feet to face the warriors' charge. His green blade moved up from the floor in a diagonal motion, cutting off the weapon arm of one of the warriors, then on the downswing grated across the abdomen of the second, leaving a sizzling burn in the slayer's hardened flesh. Wincing, the warrior tried to take hold of the energy blade itself and fell forward on his knees.

Luke pierced him through the chest, then pivoted on one foot to take on the others.

One of the warriors stalking Jacen abandoned him to engage Luke.